Heidi, Corrupted (An Ex-Wife Sharing Romance) Read online

  I knew what a coward I'd been, but it just felt like nothing was going to happen otherwise.

  For a few weeks, I enjoyed my own time, and since I didn't hear from Heidi, I assumed she was okay, that she had moved on, that she might even have come to the same conclusions I had: that we just weren't good together. There was the awkwardness of telling my family, of course, but I figured there were worse things people had to tell their families, and it was soon done and dusted. It seemed easier telling my friends, most of whom, at that age, had a somewhat horrified view of marriage anyway.

  My guilt left me and I was truly free. To be honest, I forgot about Heidi. I felt great, living life, spending my earnings, enjoying myself out with my friends as a fully-fledged grown up. I even went on a few dates here and there, but never felt like committing myself to anything because of the wonderful taste of freedom I was experiencing after the stifling oppression into which things had developed with Heidi.

  Then perhaps eight or nine months into my fresh start, on one particularly miserable Saturday evening when the rain was just incessant, there was a buzz at my door, and it was Heidi.

  Chapter Two

  "Do you mind if we just... talk?" she asked in a small, quiet voice.

  Instead of buzzing her in to the building, I said, "Wait."

  I went down to see her in person, there on the street. I had to — I was in two minds about how to deal with her. I heard the pitiful tone of her voice through that intercom, and I instantly felt sorry for her; I felt guilty for how I'd left her. After the callous way I'd ended our marriage, I suddenly felt some responsibility for her well-being. Yet at the same time, I knew how well Heidi had always been able to lull me into feeling pity for her, commiserating with her, wanting to make her feel better. I feared it was a road that might lead inexorably back to the kind of semi-comatose relationship ours had been for so many months.

  I wanted to go down there so that I might be clear in refusing her entry after hearing her make her case, or inviting her in if it seemed safe.

  I opened the door and there she was, dressed conservatively in jeans and a fairly plain blue sweatshirt, looking pale and diminutive, her eyes red from tears. Not caring about the rain streaming down all over her, soaking her to the skin.

  "You found me, then?" I asked her.

  She nodded. "Your address was on some of the paperwork from your solicitor."

  That made sense. I guess I'd never said anything to the lawyer to suggest I was concerned about giving out that kind of information to Heidi.

  "Look, I don't want..." she said, a faint tremor in her voice like she was doing her utmost to keep from crying. "... I... I know you don't... you don't want me any more..."

  I sighed. My heart was melting for her. And suddenly I was noticing how pretty she was. Funny how I hadn't seen it, ever since the physical desire had petered out between us — I'd thought her quite plain. But here she was, and a little absence had made the heart grow fonder. She was wearing a little make-up, which she'd fallen out of the habit of doing early on in our relationship. She wasn't a catwalk model, but she was a pretty enough girl — she just never did herself any favors in making the most of it.

  "Heidi, I'm sorry..." I mumbled, not quite knowing what to say — attempting a kind, pitying tone despite being reluctant to capitulate.

  "I... I'm not trying to ask you to take me back..." she said, though the faint wobble in her voice kind of suggested otherwise. "

  A sniff.

  "I just want... I just want you to help me...tell me..."

  I saw the tear slip out, to trickle down her cheek. I felt my insides quietly collapsing. Poor Heidi. I'd gone off and embraced my independence like never before, our long rocky relationship having apparently braced me with a new outlook on life — and Heidi had been dropped right back into the despair she'd been in when we'd started seeing each other.

  She sniffed again, wiped her face with her sleeve, trying to appear strong. She said, "I want you... to tell me what's wrong with me."

  I was a little taken aback at that. "What's wrong with you?"

  She nodded. "You stopped... wanting me," she said, and I could see that while I'd been assuming Heidi would just move on and find someone else to date, in fact she'd probably been wallowing in some desperate attempt to analyze what had gone wrong with us. "You stopped wanting me... and I guess... I guess I'm scared that the same's going to happen with everyone else, too."

  "No..." I said, genuinely surprised at the way she was taking this.

  "There's something wrong with me," she said, "and unless I figure it out, this is just going to happen again and again and again."

  "I — " I said, a little stunned. She'd always been a pessimist, but this took the breath away. "It's not going to happen again."

  Yet I looked at her and I did feel so sorry for her, I did feel responsibility for her. I realized she was standing there in the rain getting drenched.

  "Look, come in, come in," I said, opening the door fully, grabbing her hand to get her in out of the downpour. "You're going to catch your death out there."

  "Thanks," she gave me a weak smile as I closed the door behind her. "Should've brought an umbrella."

  I wandered over to call the elevator. "You want some coffee?"

  "Please."

  On the way up she said, "I swear, I'm not trying to.... you know... get you to take me back..."

  I probably could have been fairly cynical, thinking that she might be doing precisely what she'd just sworn she wasn't. But somehow after several months away from her, I had settled into my early disposition toward her, rather than the jaded view I'd affected in the latter phase of our relationship.

  Without the pressure to be her husband, somehow, I remembered that I'd once really liked Heidi.

  "I know," I replied to her. "But let's talk, huh? We can talk."

  She seemed quite relieved. I saw the little tremble in her hands — she was nervous, she was scared, even. She had been very upset at what had transpired. I showed her into the apartment, and she was clearly impressed at how much space I had to play with. That was East London versus North London for you, but also a recent pay rise feeding into my new place. We went into the kitchen and I fixed us both mugs of hot coffee, and for a moment or two it was strangely familiar — and yet familiar with the early stage of our relationship, when we had been on good terms. We small-talked, and Heidi seemed to relax a little.

  "How's the orchestra?"

  "Oh, you know, the same. We're doing these Bach cantatas with the Baroque Singers and it's just... annoying."

  "You never did much like Bach."

  "He's okay. I just grew up having it forced down my throat, so..."

  Coffee in hands, we went through to the open-plan lounge-diner, and sat at either ends of the couch, holding our coffee mugs as though they were shields against the awkwardness of how this conversation was going to go. They weren't great shields. We sat and silence descended upon us... and it was awkward. How could it not be?

  Yet after a moment, she took a deep breath and said, "So, look. I want you to be... you know... brutal... and just tell me, straight... you know... what's wrong with me."

  It was as though she'd practiced saying it, over and over in front of a mirror, at length, before coming here. She was still hideously nervous saying it, but she knew she desperately wanted to say it, she needed to get this out there.

  "Heidi..." I complained, "there's nothing wrong with you... we just weren't right together."

  Okay, so I had various complaints about her, but they all seemed trivial now. And my guilt was telling me firmly that all of them were probably more a reflection on my own flaws.

  "I swear, I'm not going to feel bad..." she said, that voice quivering a little, suggesting to me that it wasn't as simple as she claimed. "I just want to know... I... I don't want to meet a really nice guy and then... you know... put him off..."

  I sighed, "You're not going to put him off. You'll meet someone who
is... you know... better for you. Right for you."

  She looked me straight in the eye and said, "You were right for me. We got married, for heaven's sake. But you... lost interest..."

  I felt something squeeze my stomach, ruthlessly. Probably justice, or fate, or karma, or something like that. So, was she saying she hadn't lost interest in me? In which case, why had she never said anything?

  Well, I didn't know what to say. I searched my empty head for something.

  Heidi said, "I think you probably should have called it quits a long time ago. But you didn't want to hurt my feelings, so you just... you know... kept it going."

  She was right, of course. But the way she put it did make me sound gallant, rather than cowardly as it had really been. Nevertheless, I was mildly encouraged that she might see me — and how I had acted — in such rosy terms.

  "I just..." I said, fumbling for words, "...it just seemed to me you were miserable a lot of the time..."

  She nodded, and appeared grateful that I was revealing this little tidbit.

  "To begin with I just wanted to cheer you up all the time, but after a while... I don't know... you just kept on being miserable."

  She gave another little nod. "I guess I can see that. When I was tired... at the end of a long day..."

  I shrugged, "People like to complain about things... bitch about people... but when it's all the time... I don't know, it just gets draining."

  "Okay..."

  "I mean, I wanted to know how your day was and everything... but it got so much that I dreaded asking about it. You could have told me the bad stuff — sure. But just... not all the time."

  She nodded again. "I should have lightened up, huh."

  Now I felt bad, that I might have said this to her while we were still going out, and maybe it would have saved a lot of anguish. Maybe it would have made the whole relationship different.

  "You did when we were first going out," I said, to show her it wasn't out of the realms of possibility. "You were so... cheerful... so up-beat. I figured after a while... maybe it was me. You were miserable because you were with me."

  "No," she shook her head, "it wasn't you at all..."

  "Well..."

  She took a sip of her coffee. "I think... I think maybe after a while... I was too comfortable with you. I didn't make the effort... it was too easy just to open up about all the BS I was feeling..."

  "Opening up is okay..." I said.

  "...But just not all the time," she finished the thought, offering me perhaps her warmest smile of the afternoon. She was grateful for this. I felt a little like a fraud.

  "Uh-huh," I said, relieved she appeared to be taking it well. "You get so down in the dumps... and when a guy tries to cheer you up..."

  She nodded, "He wants to know that it's appreciated, that it helps."

  I sipped my coffee. Outside, the rain continued to hammer against the window, made you want to stay indoors, nest in a warm bed. I guess I was kind of dreading that the next thing out of Heidi's mouth would be along the lines of, well I wish I'd known all this a while ago, when we were still going out, so I could have done something about it. I didn't really have an answer to that particular point.

  Or maybe she'd promise to lighten up, and suggest maybe we could try going out again, seeing if it would improve matters if she made an effort to see the brighter side of life a little more.

  But instead, after a pause, she said, "Well, that's a real help, Joe. Thank you."

  She surprised me. I was impressed at how she was dealing with this.

  "Uh... sure," I said, not really knowing what to say to that.

  She smiled, "Of course, I'm not sure I'll get a guy interested enough in me to put it into practice..."

  My heart sank again. Here was a little of the old Heidi slipping out — taking the pessimistic view, willing things in her life to go wrong.

  I said, "Of course you will."

  "I don't think you lost interest in me just because I was gloomy from time to time," she said. Cutting, sharp, brutally intelligent — something I had come to overlook over the course of our doomed relationship.

  I sighed. "But it started off okay, didn't it? We were good together in the beginning. I was interested in you, wasn't I? I had to persuade you to go out with me..."

  She laughed. "But you hadn't been with anyone for months. I think your standards had slipped."

  "You're very attractive," I insisted, but having to argue the case, rather than casually dropping it as a compliment, did sap the power from what I told her. "Lots of guys would kill to have you."

  "If they haven't slept with anyone for months either?" She looked at me directly, and I seriously admired her courage. It was all a bit weird to me, but what Heidi wanted to know was potentially humiliating, but she was gunning for it nonetheless. She seemed to want to do something about her apparent weaknesses.

  "You got tired of me," she said now. "I just don't want every guy I meet to sleep with me a couple of times and then never want to see me again."

  It was kind of funny giving her tips so she might make a success of a relationship with another guy.

  "It won't happen like that," I insisted, but who was I to predict otherwise? The way guys can be.

  Silence, for a long while. I sipped my coffee, she sipped hers.

  Then, "Am I bad in bed?" she said, blunt, merciless.

  "Look... you're fine..." I mumbled.

  God. I was a coward. But really, you can't just go out there and tell someone they're bad in bed.

  "Tell me," she demanded. "Don't treat me with kid gloves. That won't do me any good."

  "Look... it wasn't just you... it was me as well..." It was one of those lines that came straight from the book of relationship clichés, but now that I thought about it... maybe it was me as well. Maybe I didn't make the effort I could have in between the sheets. She'd just laid there, waiting for me to do my thing — but I could have told her to get up, to do something else. I could have bought her some sexy underwear to try. I could have taken things a little more steadily in bed instead of rushing to get it over with as quickly as possible — which is how it had all evolved before the sex had stopped entirely.

  "Tell me," she insisted. But she could see it was difficult for me to be diplomatic and do as she asked. She added, her voice softening, "If you were the kind of guy who would walk away from me after sleeping with me once... maybe twice... why would that be?"

  I laughed. "Probably because I was a slime ball."

  She smiled. "Okay, but seriously. The kind of guy who would walk away from me... whereas someone else, some sex goddess, say... he might stick around for."

  I took a big gulp of coffee. "Don't they have magazine articles to tell you this sort of thing?"

  She rolled her eyes, but laughed. "But you know!" she said. "You slept with me, and everything!"

  I sighed melodramatically. "You're really putting me on the spot here."

  She smiled, "Look, trust me. You're not going to hurt me. I want to know."

  Another big gulp of the black stuff. And a deep breath. Then I figured what was the worst that could happen? If I did hurt her feelings then, well, she had asked for it. If she was going to take offense at what I said, and I never saw her again because of it, then compared to how my life was going before this afternoon, I wouldn't have lost anything.

  I said, "Okay... well... you can be a little... passive... in bed."

  "Passive?"

  "You just... kinda lie there. You lie there and wait for it to be over."

  "Okay... I guess I can see that..." she said.

  "So maybe the guy thinks... you know... you do want it to be over pretty quick... and so it is."

  "I never really had much experience..." she said in mitigation. "You know... before you... there was Matt... and maybe only a couple of others..."

  "I got lazy too," I said, and that was true enough.

  She said, "When you start out dating, you make all that effort to impress a
guy... you put on make-up, nice perfume... I guess I just... let things slip."

  "Because you had me," I agreed, though I knew I'd let things slip, too.

  "I just have to keep making the effort," she nodded.

  "And really," I said, "the guy should as well."

  She smiled. "You made the effort long enough."

  She was being nice to me. Forgiving. She couldn't have been this forgiving when she'd been mourning our lost relationship, though, surely. If she had, then... well, she must have turned to self-loathing, which wasn't good.

  "Well," she put her empty mug down on the coffee table. "This has been really helpful," she said, hinting that she ought to be on her way.

  "I'm glad it was," I said. I felt a little funny — a little disappointed, perhaps, that she hadn't actually tried to persuade me to take her back.

  Now that I'd told her something of the reasons why our relationship broke down — ignoring, it has to be said, my own flaws and problems — I felt a funny flicker of desire for her. She was, if you were looking for it, attractive. She just needed to make more of it.

  We rose to our feet, and she came in for a hug. I breathed in her familiar perfume and somehow it didn't irritate me this time. I felt mild regret for losing her — and for making her so upset. I felt some responsibility for her getting back on her feet.

  "Look," I said flippantly, "if I took you to a club tonight, I could show you all kinds of guys who'd be interested in you."

  She laughed, "Oh right, I bet."

  "Seriously. You'd have them eating out of your hand, I swear."

  "Seriously," she stepped away from me. "I seriously doubt I could even get a guy to buy me a drink."

  I don't know. I don't know where it came from, but something caught my interest in the idea. Be it this innate pessimism slipping out from Heidi's mouth again, or the guilt I felt in leaving her alone and doubting herself, it seemed like a challenge to me.

  "Okay," I said, "let's do it."

  "What?"

  I nodded, decided. "How about next Saturday?" I asked her. "We could do Friday, but my boss has been keeping us in on Fridays."